For my last night in DC, I stayed in a motel near the airport. As I checked in, the staff was bantering and bickering, and the cute clerk was trying to browbeat the maid into working her day off. It was a lively work scene, and I joined right in. I implored the maid not to cave in to the guilt trips.
The clerk made a point of telling me later that she had prevailed.
"She caved?!" I said. "Why?!"
"I'm...just...that...cute!" she chirped. "I get my way. A lot."
I groaned and wrinkled my face in disgust. "No one's that cute."
"I am."
"No. You're really not."
The clerk eyed me for a moment. "OK, I'll prove it," she said with a sly smile. She amped up the wattage. She was absolutely luminous. "You should ask me out tonight."
Uh. No.
"C'mon," she said, smiling and batting her enormous Disney-character brown eyes.
A man can only take so much. We are not practiced at turning down cute twice. Once was a modern male miracle. So I took the bait.
"OK. "Wanna go out tonight?"
She broke eye contact and went back to work. "Nah. You're way too old for me."